Comments on: Opel future hangs in the balance

By: DesignEngr

DesignEngr — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:12:09 +0000

And so the deal is done.
35% to the Russian companies, 20% to Magna, 10% to the Unions, and GM keep 35%.

Interesting to note that Opel are losing $A5.33 million a day.

By: Spitfire

Spitfire — Sat, 30 May 2009 06:16:21 +0000

Frontman Says:
May 30th, 2009 at 9:22 am

If you are buying Asian cars I would be careful to look at the build date plate compared to the compliance date before I took delivery.

Good advice Frontman. In fact that applies to any car, no matter where the origin.

By: Frontman

Frontman — Fri, 29 May 2009 23:22:49 +0000

Hmm Frustrating how much miss / partial information is floating around out there in CyberSpace!
Johnno, FIAT are NOT in a strong financial possition! Not taking anything away from Sergio and his drive to grow his company, Fiat has not been able to bring any money (of real value) to the table when in talks with GM/OPEL. All of its tenders put forward have relied upon guarantees from the EU and around 6bil Euro’s in loans/ lines of credit whatever you call them.
The Captain is correct in his view that we are oversupplied in vehicles, and it is the companies that are the Johny come lately’s that have caused the problems. Whilst it is easy to blame the older manufacturers, the culprits are those countries like Korea and China who have jumped on the band wagon to produce vehicles styled to look modern without the real substance of the established players, using factories without the enviromental controls and working conditions imposed on the rest of the world, with protectionism the likes the western world hasn’t seen since the mid 80’s. To claim that Opel, Ford and the others are the culprits is plain wrong! Try to buy a Fiesta Zetec right now, 4 months waiting list (built to order). Was a similar situation with the Astra (2 months on upper models) same for most Euro brands. WHen was the last time you had to wait over 1 month for a Japanese or Korean sourced car? What manufacturer has over 15 acres of cars on a wharf awaiting shipment just to dealers let alone new homes. If you are buying Asian cars I would be careful to look at the build date plate compared to the compliance date before I took delivery.

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:51:21 +0000

I just read some breaking news on autocar.co.uk that Magna have signed a contract to buy Opel and Vauxhall whether GM files for Chapter 11 or not. If that’s right, that’s very good news in my eyes.

By: Realcars

Realcars — Fri, 29 May 2009 12:34:41 +0000

Perhaps we loose sight of the fact that GM was very sucessful for many years and only second to Toyota in overall worldwide sales.

Main difference as I see it is that Toyota has a far more efficient model lineup across the world i.e common platforms/components and far less models than GM worldwide which must see Toyota well ahead in terms of cost per unit and the economies of scale producing less variants enabling them to still cover their production costs despite falling sales worldwide.

Hard to imagine how Fiat could keep their cost per unit down by embracing the same type of brand merchandising that has brought GM to it’s knees.

By: Captain Mainwaring

Captain Mainwaring — Fri, 29 May 2009 08:49:30 +0000

Hey, nobody’s listening. Take another deep breath and go back to the beginning of this thread.

By: Soapbox Inc

Soapbox Inc — Fri, 29 May 2009 05:11:46 +0000

Oh get over yourself, Reckless. There’s nothing wrong with Yianni’s comments. Geezes some of the regular posters here irritate me – you carry on like you own this website.

By: Reckless1

Reckless1 — Fri, 29 May 2009 04:47:21 +0000

Yianni, did you ever think of the thousands of employees that GM has paid for the best part of a century due to their competence/incompetence?

While you are feeling sorry for those who may lose their jobs, you might also sing the praises of GM for those people whose whole lives were supported.

The throwaway comments of some people are just asounding.

By: Yianni

Yianni — Fri, 29 May 2009 04:08:34 +0000

GM is letting go of one of the best brands in its stable.

Opel products are far superior to anything GM has to offer in the USA.

GM should have brought Opel to the USA and shut down some of their dodgy brands a long time ago.

I guess it’s mistakes like this that are forcing GM in to bankruptcy. I can’t say I feel sorry for them at all. Most of their cars are rubbish and the same can be said for most of their decisions in the past.

I only feel sorry for the workers that will lose their jobs because of GM’s incompetence.

By: Johnno

Johnno — Fri, 29 May 2009 02:02:16 +0000

Reckless1 – Fiat are in a very strong financial position. They have been making BIG profits in the last few years (and are still doing so despite the downturn). Also, because they have what the automotive world regards as the best small car technology now on offer, they are well positioned for the downsizing that the world wide car buying public is moving towards. Unfortunately in Australia, they are regarded poorly because of their past history (well deserved)and such small sales. (In Brazil, Fiat is the biggest seller of cars.) Their products are outstanding nowadays . Indeed, the NRMA officially declared the fiat 500 1.3 diesel Australia’s most economical car, knocking Toyota with their Hybrid off the mantle.
Sergio Marchionne has been the best automotive GM in the last decade as far as I am concenred. He has turned Fiat around from an almost dead horse to a cutting edge company that is turning out money making cars the world wants. In the process he stitched up GM for over US $1billion doallrs through a put option deal retiring Fiats debt, organised alliances around the world and played on fiats small car technology strengths. His only dissapointment hae been the sales of Alfa, despite the cars actually been rather good nowadays. However, he is on to this and there are a raft of new Alfa cars coming with some tasty technology.

By: Reckless1

Reckless1 — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:56:04 +0000

I don’t believe Fiat is acquiring all these failing car companies in order to put them to sleep and lose money.

It would be interesting to know the vision of the Fiat boss and how he sees his final structure making money.

If there was money to be made, Warren Buffet would be buying up all these failing companies, but he’s not, so in my view there is a huge crash coming for Fiat, bigger than the sum of all the smaller contributing crashes…..

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 28 May 2009 11:01:48 +0000

What I don’t understand is that even before this economic crisis Opel was slowly drowning, racking up multi-billion dollar losses with not one year of profitability since at least 2001 (financial data is not available beyond that). Yes, GM have probably restricted them with their mismanagement, but this is a brand that has shrunk from 13.9% marketshare to 8%, facing a possibly long term reduction in the overall market size before the economy fully recovers. They themselves have massive overcapacity, and yet the German government and unions seem intent on avoiding the necessary course of action. Either scuttle it and remove a large chunk of overcapacity in the overall automotive industry, or allow Fiat to get in there and cut away at some of that inefficiency and at least have a small, profitable version of Opel remaining. Any other course of action will only prolong Opels suffering, and that of the German tax payer.

By: Captain Mainwaring

Captain Mainwaring — Thu, 28 May 2009 09:50:20 +0000

Very sad, as Opel have some pretty decent products in their lineup.
The big issue here is nobody seems to be realising that with world car-making capacity about 30% over what is needed for the medium term there are going to be some casualties. Why is there always somebody (Fiat, the US Govt. or whoever) wanting to prop these dinosaurs up so that they can keep making cars that are excess to requirements.
Just let the stronger players deal to the customers that are still out there I say, and save everyone from even greater grief in the future.